Our Team
Staff College is a small and agile organisation. We are known for the quality of the programmes we deliver and the impact these have on the leaders who attend them. We believe that an integral part of our success is the quality of relationships:
- We build with leaders in the organisations we collaborate with;
- We build with the leaders who attend our programmes;
- We have within the organisation.
Led by the CEO, the charity has a small operational team who effectively manage all of our programmes.
Our highly engaging and provocative faculty brings together senior leaders with extensive experience of both leading, and developing leaders, in the health service, military, and business. Together, they have a rich collective expertise in the development of better leaders.
Meet the Team
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Ajit Abraham
Principal, Staff College
Mr Ajit ABRAHAM MBBS, MS, MA (Medical Ethics & Law), FRCS, FRCS (General Surgery) is a Consultant General, Trauma & HPB Surgeon at the Royal London Hospital, Barts Health.
At Barts Health, he has held a number of strategic leadership positions including Executive CAG Director for Surgery 2014-16, Chair of the Boards of Surgery & Cancer 2017-18, and Barts Health Deputy Chief Medical Officer 2016-18.On surgical sabbatical 2018-19, he re-established and led the HPB surgical service at Khoo Teck Puat Hospital, Singapore delivering open and minimally invasive hepato-biliary and pancreatic surgical care to the local population.
Ajit has a special interest in clinical leadership, equity and inclusion, quality improvement, patient safety and education. He has an MA in Medical Ethics & Law from Keele University, UK, 2004. He was Health Foundation QI Fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and Harvard from 2011-12. He has been Principal of Staff College since 2016.
He is an Honorary Senior Clinical Lecturer at Queen Mary University London and was appointed the Barts Health Undergraduate Dean in 2020. Ajit was appointed as the first Barts Health Executive Group Director for Inclusion and Equity in April 2022, having co-chaired the Barts Health Group Inclusion Board with Group CEO, Dame Alwen Williams.
He has a longstanding ‘Hatha Vinyasa’ Yoga and ‘Vipassana’ meditation practice.
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Yogen Amin
Senior Faculty Lead, Staff College
Yogi is a Consultant Neuroanaesthetist and Neurointensivist, and Head of Department at The National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, Queen Square, and Honorary Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Neurology, UCL. He is also the Senior Organisational Development Lead for Leadership and Engagement at UCLH. He is a member of the core programme design team and facilitator for the Staff College. Yogi has had experience with high fidelity platform simulation, with an interest in behaviours and human factors for over 10 years. His other roles include School Governor and Executive Coach.
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Charlie Brown
CEO, Staff College
Charlie has led the charity through its formative two years as Chief Operating Officer before taking up the role of Chief Executive in 2018. She has leadership experience as an executive board member and trustee within the third sector and through a variety of positions within the NHS in clinical services, clinical education, culture change programmes and leadership development.
Charlie is passionate about improving the quality of care for patients and the experience of staff working within healthcare. She believes that developing greater awareness of, and placing more importance on, the quality of human interactions, relationships and leadership is the foundation of doing so. She has designed and delivered a wide range of senior leadership development programmes for leaders in health and social care in the UK and internationally.
Charlie is a Trustee of the Point of Care Foundation, a charity dedicated to humanising healthcare. She is also a Visiting Lecturer in Healthcare Leadership at City University.
Charlie started her career as an apprentice luthier (guitar repairer), gradually working her way up to running the largest independent guitar repairs workshop in Europe and working for musicians and bands from all over the world.
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Mark Edwards
Senior Faculty Lead, Staff College
Mark Edwards is a Consultant Vascular and Trauma Surgeon based in London and the South East of England. He oversees a service improvement portfolio that includes the implementation and study of novel methods of integrating Serious Incident data in order to identify patterns and trends.
Mark graduated in Medicine from the University of London in 2003 and has worked within the NHS since. His practice as a Vascular and Trauma surgeon includes work in two specialist, tertiary care centres as well as several networked secondary care hospitals where his work interfaces with primary care.
During his training Mark undertook a two-year Safety and Leadership Fellowship linked to the work of the Staff College that saw the commencement of his work looking at the analysis of integrated Serious Incident data. This applied academic work, based upon complexity theory, has since been adopted by a number of healthcare bodies where it is being used to inform quality improvement processes.
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Ian Huntley OBE
Senior Faculty Lead, Staff College
Ian Huntley was commissioned into the Royal Marines on a university cadetship. His operational experience, mainly with 3 Commando Brigade, included tours in Northern Ireland, Northern Iraq and Afghanistan, where he was the Deputy Task Force Commander. He has held a number of command and staff appointments dealing with Counter Terrorism, Nuclear Security, and Targeting. He has also worked on policy and strategy in the Ministry of Defence and the Cabinet Office. For the last four years of his service, Ian was head of the MOD’s leadership centre, which was set up to improve the capacity of senior military officers and civil servants for strategic leadership.
Ian left the Royal Marines in 2016 and now works as an independent leadership, defence and security consultant, and an executive coach. He primarily helps to develop the leadership skills of individuals and organisations, and is currently working with the NHS, police, MOD and industry. He is a Companion of the Chartered Management Institute, a Fellow of the Institute of Leadership and Management and an Honorary Fellow of Harris Manchester College, Oxford. He enjoys most legal outdoor activities, as long as it’s not raining.
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David Lilley
Senior Faculty Lead, Staff College
David Lilley served in the Royal Navy for 29 years; a career which included command at sea, in the air and on land-based operations in Iraq. Subsequent roles included Aviation Policy and Strategic Planning in the Ministry of Defence and leading major Tri-Service Change Programmes. His broader experience also includes: Officer selection; Junior Officer leadership training and, as a Staff College Faculty Member, teaching at the Defence Academy. He was appointed a Gentleman Usher to HM The Queen in 2017.
Since 2011 he has worked as an Executive Coach and Leadership Consultant, working across a wide spectrum of Public and Commercial organisations. His clients have included Central and Local Government Departments, Start-up and Third-Sector Companies. NHS experience includes working with NHS Commissioning Groups, Foundation Trusts, Public Health England and NHS England and NHS Improvement and a GP Community Interest Company. He is a visiting lecturer in Medical Leadership at City, University of London and in Defence Leadership at the Civil Service College, also based in London. He is a Member of the Association of Project Management (MAPM) and a Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute (FCMI).
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John MackMersh
Senior Faculty Lead, Staff College
John is a member of the core faculty, designing and delivering leadership development programmes and Lead DS (Directing Staff) for the Senior Leadership Course – Leading Self. John has run his own leadership development business since 2002. Prior to this he held service improvement and leadership development roles in the railway sector and local government.
John has a reputation as a provocative, highly experiential facilitator with a firm grasp of theory which, nonetheless, does not stop him marvelling at how little we all know about how human beings do and don’t work well together! John also works at an individual level with Senior Clinicians and Managers within the NHS as an Executive Coach giving him a deep insight into the very real problems NHS leaders need to engage with.
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Jane Jones
Senior Faculty Lead, Staff College
Jane is a Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist in Cardiff leading the Forensic CAMH Service. She graduated from the University of Wales in 2005 working for the NHS since across North Wales and North London before returning to Cardiff. She is a Northerner.
Jane’s clinical work is underpinned by psychoanalytic and systemic thinking with a specific training in psychodynamic psychotherapy, and these theoretical bases inform her work with individuals and groups.
With a firm belief that staff wellbeing is at the heart of NHS improvement and that positive and thoughtful leadership is a vital aspect of this Jane is delighted to be part of the Staff College.
Associate Faculty Members
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Adrian Cassar
Read Bio +Adrian Cassar
Adrian Cassar is an Executive Coach with a background in command and leadership development in the Royal Navy. He qualified in Coaching and Behavioural Change at Henley Business School and has studied behavioural psychology and decision-making with the Open University.
His Service career took him to multinational, frigate and regional Command, and he was involved developing cross-Government security and defence Policy in the Ministry of Defence. At the Defence Academy, he was closely involved with the personal development of individuals at key transitional moments in their careers, preparing them for operational and strategic-level leadership. This placed particular emphasis on developing students’ communication skills and emotional intelligence.
Adrian is involved with several coaching programmes for senior leadership and management, within the Police, education and central government. His Fellowships in the Chartered Management Institute and the Royal Society for the Arts, Economics and Commerce help to keep him abreast of change. He is qualified to Level 7 by the Chartered Management Institute in Strategic Leadership.
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Gordon Coutts
Read Bio +Gordon Coutts
Dr. Gordon Coutts has a medical degree from London University and a business education from Harvard Business School. He has senior leadership experience across three continents, in large businesses in the private, public and private equity sectors. He has held P&L responsibility for £350m+ organisations and leadership experience of headcounts exceeding 4000. He has held Chief Executive roles for over 12 years including as CEO of an NHS Foundation Trust. High levels of employee engagement resulted in citations in the Top 50 Best Places to Work on four occasions.
He has worked as an advisory board member and non-executive for a variety of organisations as well as co-chaired international business associations for the past 15 years.
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Chris Gibson
Read Bio +Chris Gibson
Chris Gibson brings over 34 years military experience to Staff College. He has held leadership roles throughout his career which have seen him serve on specialist military operations all over the world. Having gained a post graduate award in Medical Simulation Management from Harvard University, Chris was appointed as The Chief Instructor of The Army Medical Services Training Centre, the world’s largest medical simulation centre. Whilst there he co-developed a training and assurance methodology for hospital care which has been adopted by American, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand militaries as international best practice.
Of recent Chris was given the task of leading on the development and delivery of a training model for military and NHS volunteers to combat the Ebola Virus Disease in West Africa. This was an irrefutable success which saw over 1200 personnel deploy appropriately trained and equipped for the rigor of delivering care in a West African jungle, for which he was awarded the MBE.
A known innovator, Chris was recently awarded with The Health Service Journal Special Recognition Award, the first occasion this has been issued for his development of innovative solutions to healthcare this was latterly followed by Ideas UK as International Innovator of the Year 2017-18. Of late Chris has been the government lead on assisting London Ambulance Service NHS Trust out of Special Measures. He remains much sought after as a key note speaker on leadership and innovation by leading academic institutes.
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Anna Heywood
Read Bio +Anna Heywood
Anna is a Chartered Organisational Psychologist, working as an executive coach and facilitator, specialising in leadership development for individuals and teams. After attaining her MSc in Organisational Psychology from UMIST, where she focussed on behavioural change, she worked for various leadership development & coaching consultancies, including Roffey Park, OPP Ltd and PBCoaching. Anna has worked with a wide variety of private, public and voluntary sector organisations and spends much of her time working with directors, chief executives and their leadership teams. Anna has spent many years managing and delivering organisational development programmes to improve organisational capability, culture and leadership performance. In addition to this she has spent a number of years training others to become business and executive coaches and enabling organisations to adopt a coaching culture.
Her interests lie in developing leaders and teams to allow them to reach their true potential, through increased awareness of themselves, others, their relationships and the complex systems within which they work. Anna has a particular passion for helping leaders navigate the volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous nature of the organisations they work within.
Inherently curious about what makes people tick and why we behave in the way we do, as a business psychologist, Anna brings both psychological & business appreciation to her work. Her experience of working with leaders and teams has highlighted the importance of aligning individual & team development to the needs of the organisation to ensure return on investment and improved performance.
“Anna provides support, challenge, structure, follow-up, care, development, self-awareness and toolkits for improvement! I have absolutely no doubt that I would not have developed in the last 10 years in the way that I have without her coaching me.” Global People Director, High Street Retailer. -
Tim Hodgson
Read Bio +Tim Hodgson
Tim Hodgson, Consultant in Oral Medicine/Honorary Associate Professor was appointed Medical Director Specialist Hospitals Board, UCLH NHS Trust in November 2019. He had previously been Clinical Director at the Eastman Dental Hospital since January 2014 and had supported the move of the Eastman and RNENT hospitals from their Gray’s Inn Road sites to the main trust campus at Warren Street. He has innovated several workshops for staff development. He sits on the UCLH Board as Executive medical Director. He has lead sections of the MJDF exam for the Royal College of Surgeons and ORE for the GDC. He advocates self-awareness resilience and change training for health care professionals.
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Jamie Martin
Read Bio +Jamie Martin
Jamie Martin retired from the Army in 2015 after 33 years of service. His career included command of an armoured reconnaissance regiment and operational tours in Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Kosovo and Iraq as well as tours in command of an international training and advisory team in Sierra Leone, monitoring a peace treaty in Mozambique and working in various headquarters and departments of the Army and the Ministry of Defence, where he specialised in policy, strategy, planning and in media and strategic communications.
Since leaving the Army, Jamie has developed a second career as an independent training, leadership and security consultant. Much of his work involves delivering Disaster Management training both in the UK and abroad (Oman, Sierra Leone and the Caribbean) primarily to individuals in the emergency services, military and Government Departments including a Ministry of Health. Jamie has used his extensive experience of command and leadership in the Army and built on his military training experience, which includes his time as a faculty member at the UK Defence Academy where he taught the Defence Studies and Leadership MA course, to develop his expertise and interest in the training and development of individuals at every level across a wide range of backgrounds, cultures and experience.
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Gill Wilkinson QVRM
Read Bio +Gill Wilkinson QVRM
Gill Wilkinson has served in the Army for 29 years, initially as a Regular Officer and now as a Reservist. She has led soldiers on operations in Northern Ireland and The Balkans and worked across a range of specialist logistic, human resources and training roles, including as an assessor of leadership potential at the Army Officer Selection Board. She was the Deputy Commander of The Royal Military Academy Sandhurst from 2018-2020 and is currently the Deputy Military Secretary Reserves, with responsibility for career development policy and talent management of the Army’s Reserve component.
Since 2012 Gill has delivered leadership assessment and development programmes to senior leaders across a range of sectors including Health, Higher Education and Professional Sport and also works as an executive coach. She has a post graduate qualification in Education from the University of Edinburgh. A successful sportswoman in her earlier years, she captained her university hockey team and, through quirk of being in the right place at the right time, represented the Army in Bobsleigh, placing second in the British Bobsleigh Championships back in 1997. She enjoys most outdoor activities and is too easily persuaded to sign up for events which need much more commitment to putting the training miles in than they used to!
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Kevin Fleming
Read Bio +Kevin Fleming
Starting life as a physicist, Kevin served in the Royal Navy for a third of a century. His experiences were varied and challenging, yet always stimulating. He led and has been led. He has extensive experience in may aspects of maritime aviation, gained while operating helicopters from warships in the world’s seas and oceans. Throughout, he led and managed teams from four to many hundreds.
Alongside his aviation experiences, Kevin trained, educated and developed many leaders. He positively influenced their way of thinking and improved their decision-making. By developing their questioning and evidence-based analysis, he enabled them to better understand the importance of context, whilst developing their self-awareness and emotional intelligence. He concluded his Naval career as the UK Defence Attaché to Brazil, a culturally rich and tremendously diverse setting. Underpinned by highly effective bi-lingual communication, he developed multi-level enduring personal relationships, vital in international diplomacy.
Kevin now engages in many areas: volunteering in his local Somerset community as a Parish Councillor, local trustee, and engaged in heritage projects, he enjoys the outdoor life on his doorstep. He is also a maritime situational awareness expert focused on delivering regenerative socio-economic benefits in the blue economy. His Staff College role sees him continuing his active role in public sector senior leadership development.
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Casey Fuke
Read Bio +Casey Fuke
Casey is a Coach, Mediator and Army Officer. She supports leaders and teams improve their confidence, tune into their intuition and unlock their potential. Her expertise in applied positive psychology and coaching psychology is combined with her decade of military leadership experience.
Casey commissioned as an Officer and immediately commanded troops in the UK, Canada and Kenya. Her career highlight was leading the Army basic training course and transforming civilians into confident soldiers in just 14 weeks.
She has facilitated hundreds of people in culture change and diversity & inclusion matters. She advised the Royal Marines on training women ahead of the historical opening, that now sees females serving in the organisation.
She advocates that she benefitted hugely from her own coaching journey and continues to learn and develop every day, striving to live by the mantra that failure and change is not something to avoid or be ashamed of but provides the best opportunity for learning, growth and fulfilment.
As part of her Post Graduate Diploma in Applied Positive Psychology and Coaching Psychology she was awarded a distinction in Coaching Psychology and in Wellbeing for Leaders. She is also qualified as an NLP practitioner. Casey is fully insured and accredited with the EMCC.